historically a symbol of slavery: the muzzle celebrates a revival with COVID-19 as FFP3 mask
By Ralph T. Niemeyer
Contrary to the assurances of medical establishment and politicians, PCR tests are not suitable for diagnosing an alleged “SARS-CoV-2 infection”.
With the polymerase chain reaction test, or PCR test for short, those in power have the ultimate means of power in their hands to put the world into a lockdown rigidity.
The belief that PCR is hammered into people to keep them from going on the barricades is that if a person tests “positive”, they are “infected” with a new and potentially deadly virus. But this is by no means the case, because on closer examination of the facts, only one thing can be concluded: These tests are completely unsuitable for determining an alleged infection with the allegedly new virus.
On March 16, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) held a press conference on COVID-19, at which its Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus implored the world church:
“We have a simple message for all countries: test, test, test!”
This message was spread in the media to the furthest corners of the world, including Reuters and the BBC. And on May 3, 2020, the presenter of German second TV channel ZDF’s ‘heute journal‘ passed on the mantra of the Corona dogma to his audience with admonishing words:
“Testing, testing, testing – that is the credo in this pandemic. Only in this way can it really become clear how much the virus is spreading and where ”.
Such assurances reveal that the belief in the informative value of the polymerase chain reaction tests, or PCR for short, in matters of COVID-19 is so strong that it has taken on religious traits and practically does not tolerate any contradiction.
But religions are known to be based on belief – and not on scientific facts. And Walter Lippmann, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and known as the most influential journalist of the 20th century, wrote in the world’s family record more than 100 years ago: “Where all think alike, no one thinks very much” – that is:
“Where everyone thinks the same, nobody thinks very much”.
When it comes to PCR, it is therefore most remarkable that none other than Kary B. Mullis, who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1993 for inventing PCR technology, did not “think alike”.
Unfortunately, Mullis passed away last year at the age of 74. However, there is no doubt that the biochemist considered PCR to be completely unsuitable for detecting viral infection.
Incidentally, it was and is not designed to be a diagnostic instrument for the detection of virus infections, but to be a production technique that enables gene fragments to be reproduced millions or even billions of times.
The journalist Gina Kolata, for example, describes in her article for the New York Times in 2007 with the title “Faith in Quick Test Leads to Epidemic That” how it can end in a disaster when a virus pandemic is declared based on PCR tests wasn’t (“Belief in a rapid test leads to an epidemic that never existed“)
Of course, that shouldn’t come as a surprise. Because the PCR tests, which are used en masse to find so-called COVID-19 patients who are allegedly infected with SARS-CoV-2, do not even have a valid gold standard with which they can be compared.
This is an absolutely fundamental point. In order to determine their accuracy – or their sensitivity and specificity – tests have to be evaluated by comparing them with the most accurate method available – the so-called gold standard.
An example is a pregnancy test where the gold standard is pregnancy itself. But when it comes to COVID-19, there is no such thing, as Sanjaya Senanayake, an Australian specialist in infectious diseases, confirmed in an interview with ABC-TV. He answered the question “How accurate is the [COVID-19] – [PCR] test?” As follows:
“For example, if we have a new test to detect (the bacterium) Staphylococcus aureus in blood, we already have corresponding blood cultures – and these are our gold standard, which we have been using for decades. And we could ‘calibrate’ a new test (for Staphylococcus aureus) on this gold standard. But we do not have such a gold standard test for COVID-19”.
Jessica C. Watson of Bristol University in the UK confirms this. In her article “Interpreting a COVID-19 test result”, recently published in The British Medical Journal, BMJ, she writes that “there is no clear ‘gold standard’ for COVID-19 tests”.
But Watson does not conclude the only logical thing from this, namely that the tests are unsuitable for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 and for the diagnosis of COVID-19 – and that only a virus, which through isolation and complete purification (‘purification’) has been proven can be a solid gold standard.
Instead, Watson claims in all seriousness that, “pragmatically”, the COVID-19 diagnosis – including, hear and be amazed, the PCR tests themselves – “is perhaps the best gold standard available”. However, such a statement is devoid of any scientific basis.
For one thing, you don’t have to be a super scientist to realize that it is downright absurd to say the PCR tests themselves could be part of a gold standard that is used to evaluate the PCR tests.
On the other hand, there are no unmistakable specific symptoms for COVID-19. This was also confirmed to us by Thomas Löscher, orthodox physician and former head of the Department of Infection and Tropical Medicine at the University of Munich. And if there are no unmistakable symptoms for COVID-19, the COVID-19 diagnosis – contrary to Watson’s statement – cannot logically serve as a valid gold standard for the PCR tests.
In addition, alleged experts like Watson overlook the fact that only virus isolation and complete virus purification or only clear virus detection can be a valid gold standard.
For this reason we asked Watson how she came to write that the COVID-19 diagnosis “is perhaps the best gold standard available” when there are no unmistakable symptoms for COVID-19, and whether there are not only the virus itself could be the best possible gold standard. Unfortunately, Watson has not yet answered these questions, despite repeated inquiries.
The question naturally arises: what is required for solid virus detection? And the answer is: In order to be able to provide this, we first of all have to know where the RNA comes from, to which the PCR tests are then “calibrated”.
And textbooks, for example that by White / Fenner: Medical Virology, 1986, as well as leading virus researchers such as Luc Montagnier or Dominic Dwyer, unequivocally state in this context that complete particle purification is an essential prerequisite for the existence of a virus.
Mind you, “Purification” means the separation of an object from everything that does not belong to this object – as, for example, the Nobel Prize winner Marie Curies isolated radium from tons of pitchblende in 1898. It is only on the basis of such a complete purification of a particle that it is possible to prove that the RNA found on the particle in question originates from a new virus.
In this context, it must be remembered that PCR is extremely sensitive. This means that you can “pick up” even the smallest snippets – that is, DNA or RNA fragments.
But it cannot be used to determine what type of particle these gene sequences belong to. This must be determined beforehand or in a separate process.
And since the PCR tests are “calibrated” on gene sequences, in this case on RNA sequences, since it is assumed that SARS-CoV-2 is an RNA virus, it must of course be clearly proven that these gene snippets actually are part of the claimed virus.
And in order to be able to prove this without a doubt, the correct isolation and complete purification of the suspected virus is an indispensable prerequisite.
For this reason, we asked the research teams of the relevant work mentioned in connection with the alleged detection of SARS-CoV-2, among other things, whether the electron microscopic images depicted in their in vitro studies show completely purified viruses.
But not a single team was able to answer this question with yes – and mind you, no one wrote back that full cleaning was not a necessary step for solid virus detection. We only received answers like “Our electron microscope image does not show a completely purified virus”.
The particles that can be seen in the electron microscope images of this work are, mind you, images of the final result of the respective experiment.
And these studies do not come up with any other test result from which recordings could have been made.
This means: If the authors of these studies admit that their published electron microscope images do not show completely purified particles, then they definitely have not found any such “purified” particles – which undermines the claim that the particles shown are demonstrably viral.
In this regard, it should be noted that some researchers use the term “isolation” in their work, even though the methods described therein do not represent a proper process of isolation including complete purification. As a result, they misuse the term “isolation” in their publications.
In this context, we also contacted the well-known virologist Charles Calisher. In 2001, the journal Science published a “passionate plea … from experienced virologists”, including Calisher, to the younger generation.
The thrust of this appeal: The modern methods for detecting viruses such as “sleek PCR… say little or nothing about how a virus reproduces, which animals are carriers of it [or] how it makes people sick… It is so like looking at someone’s fingerprint to see if they have bad breath.”
That the RNA gene sequences, which the scientists took from the tissue samples prepared in their in-vitro studies and to which the so-called SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR tests were finally “calibrated”, to a new pathogenic virus called SARS-CoV-2 is based only on belief, not on facts.
To make matters worse, one way or another – also beyond the topic of “purification” – no scientific evidence has been provided to date that these particles, known as SARS-CoV-2, are pathogens that cause what is known as COVID-19 referred to as.
Because in order to be able to prove a well-founded causal connection here, it would have been essential to carry out an experiment that fulfilled Koch’s four postulates. However, there is no such experiment, as Amory Devereux and Rosemary Frei have recently demonstrated for the OffGuardian.
The necessity that these four Koch postulates must also be fulfilled with regard to what is called SARS-CoV-2 in order to declare it as a pathogenic (disease-causing) virus also results from the fact that appropriate attempts have been made to meet these.
But the researchers who claim that they have shown that SARS-CoV-2 fulfills the four postulates have in truth failed miserably with their attempts.
An example of this is a study published in Nature on May 7, 2020. This work not only shows inadequacies that make it null and void from a scientific point of view, it also does not fulfill any of the four postulates.
The laboratory mice in this study, which were allegedly “infected”, did not show any relevant clinical symptoms that could have clearly indicated pneumonia.
However, according to Koch’s third postulate, exactly these symptoms should have occurred in the mice if they had actually been infected by a dangerous and potentially fatal virus that, with COVID-19, is said to cause a disease that by definition primarily affects the respiratory tract.
The only things observed in the animals were slight loss of bristles and weight. But this is negligible, not only because it could have been caused by the treatment of the mice themselves, but also because it only occurred temporarily and the weight of the poor animals returned to normal in the course of the experiments.
In addition, none of the animals died – except for those who were killed to perform autopsies on them. And let’s not forget: Such experiments should definitely have been carried out before the PCR tests were put on the market and, above all, should have been successfully completed, which did not happen.
So it is hardly surprising that none of the leading representatives of the official theory on COVID-19 in this country – neither the German Robert Koch Institute (RKI) nor Professor Alexander S. Kekulé from the University of Halle nor his renowned colleagues Hartmut Hengel and Ralf Bartenschlager from the German Society for Virology nor the mentioned Thomas Löscher nor Ulrich Dirnagl from the Charité Berlin nor Georg Bornkamm, virologist and professor emeritus at the Helmholtz Center Munich – was able to answer our following question:
If the particles that are said to be a virus of a new type called SARS-CoV-2 have not been completely purified, how can you be sure that the RNA gene sequences from these particles will be associated with a particular new virus? can?
Especially if studies show that substances such as antibiotics, which are added to the cell cultures in the in vitro experiments carried out for the purpose of virus detection, can “stress” these cell cultures to such an extent that new gene sequences arise that did not previously exist – one aspect , to which the Nobel Prize winner Barbara McClintock drew attention in 1983 in her Nobel Prize lecture.
It should not go unmentioned here that we also directed this question to the Charité – i.e. to the employer of Christian Drosten, Germany’s most influential virologist and advisor to the federal government on matters of COVID-19 and co-author of the PCR test protocol, the first in the world was “accepted”, not validated! by the WHO. We kept asking for an answer for months, but without success. We only received an answer from the Charité on June 18, 2020 – but only with the help of the Berlin lawyer Viviane Fischer.
Regarding our question as to whether the Charité was convinced that adequate and complete particle purification had been carried out in connection with the PCR protocols developed by her team led by Victor Corman, the Charité was unable to do so and answer yes.
And although the Charité claimed that they were “certain that they were testing for the virus and not for anything else that could occur in an infected patient,” Corman said in the said Charité study:
“RNA was extracted from clinical samples with the MagNA Pure 96 system (Roche, Penzberg, Germany) and from cell culture supernatants with the viral RNA mini kit (QIAGEN, Hilden, Germany).”
That said, the authors of this study simply assume that the RNA is viral.
In addition, the study by Corman and colleagues published on January 23, 2020 did not even go through a proper peer-review process – and no solid control experiments were conducted on the procedures described therein. But both are essential for a scientific work to be described as really solid.
Regardless of this, it is certain that we have no knowledge of the false-positive rate of the PCR tests – that is, the number of people who tested “positive” even though they definitely do not suffer from the virus infection to be diagnosed.
The reason: No comprehensive studies have been carried out with people who are definitely not infected by this virus. Mind you, this has to be proven with a method that is independent of the tests, i.e. with a solid gold standard.
It is therefore hardly surprising that studies come to results that make the tests completely pointless. The health authority of the Chinese province of Guangdong reported in February 2020 that people who tested “positive”, after they had fully recovered from their symptoms of the disease, were initially tested “negative” but then “positive” again.
A month later, a study published in the Journal of Medical Virology showed that in a hospital in Wuhan, China, 29 out of 610 patients had three to six test results that ranged between “negative”, “positive” and “doubtful”.
A third example is a study from Singapore in which tests were carried out on 18 patients almost daily. It was shown that in the majority of those affected the test results changed from “positive” to “negative” and back to “positive” at least once, and in one patient even four times.
Even Wang Chen, president of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, admitted in February that the PCR tests are “only 30 to 50 percent accurate,” while Sin Hang Lee of the Milford Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory wrote a letter to the Coronavirus Response Team to the WHO and Anthony S. Fauci, the “gray eminence” of US virus research, which stated that “it was widely reported on social media that the RT-qPCR test kits which are used to detect SARS-CoV-2 RNA in human samples, produce many false positive results and are not sensitive enough to detect some really positive cases.”
In other words:
Even if we were to theoretically assume that these PCR tests can really prove a virus infection, the tests would be practically worthless and would therefore only cause unfounded panic in the people who tested “positive”.
This is also clear in view of the positive predictive value – the “Positive Predictive Value”, or PPV for short. The PPV indicates the probability that a person with a “positive” test result is really “positive”, that is, is really infected with the supposed virus.
The PPV depends on two factors: the distribution, known in technical jargon as “prevalence”, of the pathogen in the general population, and the specificity of the test.
Specificity is defined as the proportion or percentage of people who are actually not sick and for whom the test correctly turns out “negative”. For example, if a test has a specificity of 95 percent, this means that 5 percent of healthy people will falsely test “positive”.
If one takes a concrete specificity as a basis, then the following applies: the higher the prevalence (spread), the higher the PPV.
In this context, the journal Deutsches Ärzteblatt published an article on June 12, 2020 in which the PPV was calculated using three different prevalence scenarios. The results must be viewed very critically.
First, because it is not possible, as stated, to calculate specificity without a solid gold standard.
And second, because the calculations in the Ärzteblatt article are based on the specificity determined in the study by Jessica Watson. However, as also mentioned, this study is ultimately worthless.
But even if one abstracts from these two points and assumes that the underlying specificity of 95 percent is correct and that we know the prevalence, then even the mainstream medical journal comes to the following conclusion: The so-called SARS-CoV-2 RT -PCR tests can have “appallingly low” PPV.
In one of the three scenarios played out in the Ärzteblatt article, in which a prevalence of 3 percent is assumed, the result is a PPV of just 30 percent. According to this, believe it or not, 70 percent of those who tested “positive” would be falsely “positive”.
Nevertheless, even in such a case, those affected would be “ordered to quarantine”, as even the Ärzteblatt critically notes.
In a second scenario, the prevalence of the disease is assumed to be 20 percent. In this case, there is a PPV of 78 percent, i.e. 22 percent of the “positive” tests would be false “positive”.
In reality, this would mean: Of the currently around 10.5 million people who are currently considered “positive” worldwide, 2.3 million would be false “positive”.
All of this fits in with the fact that even the US epidemiological agency CDC and the American drug approval authority FDA admit that the so-called “SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR tests” are not suitable for SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis.
In the document “CDC 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel” of March 30, 2020, for example, it says: “Detection of viral RNA may not indicate the presence of infectious virus or that 2019-nCoV is the causative agent for clinical symptoms” and “This test cannot rule out diseases caused by other bacterial or viral pathogens”. And the FDA admits that “positive results … do not rule out bacterial infection or co-infection with other viruses. The agent detected may not be the definite cause of disease“.
Even in the instructions for use of PCR tests it is explicitly stated that they are not intended for what they are permanently used for: for diagnosis.
This is exactly how we read it in the Altona Diagnostics and Creative Diagnostics manuals.
Or take the LightMix Modular Assays sold by the pharmaceutical giant Roche. Assays are an integral part of a PCR test.
And the product announcement for these LightMix Modular Assays states: “These assays are not intended for use as an aid in the diagnosis of coronavirus infection” and “For research use only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures”.
Incidentally, the LightMix assays are produced by the Berlin company TIB Molbiol, using the protocol described in the Corman study. At the same time, the managing director of TIB Molbiol, Olfert Landt, is one of the co-authors of Corman et al. Papers. This conflict of interest is not disclosed as such in the study.
But that’s not all, because in the instructions for use of the aforementioned RT-qPCR test from Creative Diagnostics, for example, it also expressly states that they “strike” many germs, including “Influenza A Virus (H1N1), Influenza B Virus (Yamagata), Respiratory Syncytial Virus (type B), Respiratory Adenovirus (type 3, type 7), Parainfluenza Virus (type 2), Mycoplasma Pneumoniae, Chlamydia Pneumoniae”.
Where is evidence that the tests can measure “viral load”?
The product descriptions of the RT-qPCR tests for SARS-COV-2 also state that they are “qualitative” tests, although the “q” in “qPCR” stands for “quantitative”.
In fact, they are not really “quantitative” tests. This means that they do not even show how many virus particles are in the body.
And that’s crucial. Because in order to be able to establish with certainty that someone is really sick with a virus not only according to laboratory results but in the real world, this sick person would actually have to carry millions or even millions of virus particles that actively multiply in his body. But the PCR tests do not allow such “quantitative” measurements.
This means that the CDC, the WHO, the FDA or the RKI can claim that the PCR tests can measure the so-called “viral load” – that is, how many virus particles are in a person’s body – “this has been proven never, which is an enormous scandal ”, as the journalist Jon Rappoport criticizes.
Indeed, the very term “viral load” is misleading. For example, at a dinner party, if you ask those present what “viral load” means, you usually get the answer that it shows the amount of viruses circulating in the bloodstream. But when you then reply that the “viral load” does not show any viruses, but only gene molecules, people are usually amazed.
In order to clearly prove that the PCR can measure how heavily a person is “burdened” with a disease-causing virus, the following experiment should have been carried out – which, remarkably, has not yet happened:
You take, say, a few hundred or even a thousand people and take samples from them. Make sure that the people taking the samples are not the same people doing the PCR tests. Researchers will never know who the patients are and what state of health they are in. Then the scientists carry out the PCR on the samples and note which virus they found and in what amount.
Then they come to the conclusion, for example, that they found a bunch of what they call a virus in patients 29, 86, 199, 272 and 293. The next step is to see how fit the patients are. Patients 29, 86, 199, 272 and 293 should of course be very ill, since according to the PCR test results, an unbelievable number of viruses multiply in their bodies. But are they really sick – or are they possibly even as fit as a gym shoe?
In addition, the Corman and team protocol (“Drosten PCR test”) provides for the E-gene assay as a pre-test, while the Pasteur Institute uses the same assay as a confirmatory test.
That alone is questionable because, according to Corman and colleagues, the E-gene assay “probably detects all Asian viruses”.
And so it is also very problematic that at the beginning of April 2020 the WHO changed the algorithm and recommended that from now on a PCR test can be regarded as “positive” even in the event that only the E-gene assay is “positive” The result is provided by, although, according to Corman and colleagues, it probably “tracks down” all Asian viruses.
This means that a proven non-specific test result is officially sold as specific. Thus, this change in the algorithm by the WHO miraculously increased the number of those who tested “positive”. Tests with the E-gene assay are produced, for example, by Roche, TIB Molbiol and R-Biopharm.
High Cq values finally reduce the test results to absurdity. Another major problem is that many PCR tests have a Cq of over 35 – and some, for example the “Drosten PCR test”, even have a Cq of 45.
“Cq” stands for “Cycle Quantification” – Value, and it indicates how many cycles of the reproduction (replication) of DNA (genetic material) are required in order to obtain a real signal from a biological sample with the PCR.
And “Cq values higher than 40 are suspect because of the implied low efficiency and generally should not be reported”, as stated in the MIQE guidelines.
MIQE is the abbreviation for “Minimum Information for Publication of Quantitative Real-Time PCR Experiments”.
This is a set of guidelines designed to ensure that real-time PCR studies, also known as quantitative PCR or qPCR, produce really solid results. The inventor himself, Kary Mullis, also stated in this context:
“If you have to go more than 40 cycles to amplify a single-copy gene, there is something seriously wrong with your PCR”.
The MIQE guidelines were developed under the aegis of Stephen A. Bustin, Professor of Molecular Medicine, globally recognized expert on qPCR and author of the book “AZ of Quantitative PCR”, which has been referred to as “the Bible of qPCR”.
Bustin recently pointed out in an interview that it is far from ideal to use arbitrarily high Cq values, because they can then either be too low, which would actually eliminate valid results, or too high, which makes the probability wrong positive “results increased (see audio interview below).
In his opinion, a Cq should be aimed for in the 20s to 30s. However, if the Cq was over 35, he would express concern about the reliability of the results obtained.
There are also a number of factors that can significantly change the results of the tests. This also includes the conversion of RNA into complementary DNA (cDNA).
Before starting the PCR, if a suspected RNA virus such as SARS-CoV-2 is being searched for, the RNA must be converted into cDNA using the enzyme reverse transcriptase, which is why the test names also include an “RT”, the abbreviation for “Reverse Transcriptase”, before “PCR” or “qPCR”.
However, this conversion process is “widely considered to be inefficient and variable,” as Jessica Schwaber from the Center for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine in Toronto found together with two research colleagues in a study published in 2019.
Stephen A. Bustin sees similar problems here. He pointed out that in the course of the process of converting RNA to cDNA, the amount of DNA that is ultimately obtained can vary widely, even by a factor of 10 – with the same high RNA starting basis, mind you.
And if you now consider that the gene sequences are doubled with each cycle, it becomes clear that even a slight deviation in the receipt of the cDNA amount can change the end result extremely, which in itself destroys the meaningfulness of the test.
With regard to publications on RT-qPCR – and the COVID-19 tests are RT-qPCR tests! – Bustin also stated:
“We demonstrate that elementary protocol errors, inappropriate data analysis and inadequate reporting continue to be rife and conclude that the majority of published RT-qPCR data are likely to represent technical noise”.
And “technical noise” ultimately means nothing else than – to put it casually – “whisked dung”.
So how can it be that those who claim that the PCR tests are absolutely meaningful for the so-called COVID-19 diagnosis practically ignore the fundamental inadequacies of these tests – and do so even when they have critical questions about the validity of the tests to be faced?
One thing is certain: the apologists of the coronavirus hypothesis should have dealt with these questions before they threw the tests on the market and basically gave the whole world a lockdown.
Especially since the criticism and the questions raised should simply come to mind immediately to anyone who claims even a bit of scientific understanding.
Inevitably, the thought arises that financial and political interests play a decisive role in this unwillingness to meet scientific obligations.
It should be noted, for example, that the WHO has close financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry, as the British Medical Journal 2010 showed.
And experts criticize “that the apparent corruption and conflicts of interest at WHO have not only continued since then, but have even increased“. And the CDC, to name just another important player in the virus theater, is obviously no better off.
Ultimately, some things may be speculative about the reasons and possible motives for the actors’ behavior, and many of those involved are certainly acting in good faith.
But the scientific facts are clear: The number of cases that are trumpeted after roaming the country with the PCR tests do not in the least justify frightening people who have tested “positive” and imposing lockdown measures on the countless people in poverty and plunge into despair or even drive them to suicide.
And a “positive” result can also have serious consequences for the patient, because all non-viral factors are de facto faded out during the research into the cause and in the course of this the patients are experimentally treated with highly toxic drugs and invasively ventilated.
Such treatment can be fatal, especially for the elderly and patients with previous illnesses, as we explained in the Rubicon article “Fatal Therapy”.
So if there has actually been a significant excess mortality somewhere, then factors such as therapy and lockdown measures must by no means be disregarded in the search for the causes.
This is all the more true when you consider that the “COVID-19” death statistics are full of patients who were already terminally ill and only ended up in these statistics because of a “positive” test result, which could not be more dubious. The test is the actual pandemic, not a supposedly new and exceptionally dangerous virus.
